ESPN2 showed players going through Heroes of the Storm this weekend, and nobody was quite sure what to make of it. Except Colin Cowherd, who hated it.
Cowherd’s rant, found by VG24/7 and first posted by SportsGrid, is really something special, even by the standards of a media empire that hosts Stephen A. Smith. Here, have a listen!
More or less, Cowherd takes a few weak stabs at mocking nerds and repeats, over and over again, that he will quit if he’s ever forced to cover an eSports tournament. A fun game to play with this clip is to predict which cheesy radio drops he uses, or figure out what he means by “tolerating” Donkey Kong.
Ignorance of, and thus fear and hatred of, video games isn’t unusual among broadcasters, and I just find this kind of thing sad at this point. This is three minutes of a grown man getting himself into a froth because a network that semi-regularly shows Major League Eating got paid by a video game company to show two teams play their latest product, and insisting that if video games get more popular than he wants them to be, he’ll take his ball and go home.
That said, I am greatly looking forward to the inevitable petition requesting that Cowherd be ESPN’s go-to guy for eSports. Even better would be if ESPN made him do it; for all of Cowherd’s blowhard claims, the guy’s contract likely puts him at the beck and call of the Worldwide Leader. So come on, ESPN. Let’s see if Cowherd will really cut bait.
(Via VG24/7, SportsGrid)
